Seeding Marine Innovation in WA with a Wave Energy Deployment in Albany

That’s a wrap on the M4 Wave Energy Demonstrator sea trial!

The impressive ‘Kwilyilah’ has completed its 6-month summer sea trial in King George Sound, Albany. An amazing effort by the team at The UWA Oceans Institute, project partners, local Albany contractors and international collaborators who all played an integral part in this pioneering wave energy demonstration project.

The deployment was the culmination of a lot of hard work by the project team, led by UWA’s Marine Energy Research Australia and drawing on skills and contributions from a broad network of partners from across the Blue Economy CRC network and local contractors in Albany.

MCB Constructions were the lead fabricator for the project and said,

“We knew it would be a challenging project to cost up and fit in with our other jobs but we would absolutely do it again, ideally already being engaged in the design stages early on. The project identified a tight team of local businesses that work really well together, and everyone got benefit from it.”

As the world’s first open-access wave energy deployment, live data was uploaded to a public website throughout the deployment. Ongoing communication is sharing the lessons learned and prospects for wave energy with a broad audience.

Over the summer, M4 experienced maximum wave heights up to 4m, demonstrating the survivability of the M4 concept. Power absorption up to the rated capacity of the device – 20kW instantaneous power – was demonstrated (with accompanying mean power of 2kW over 20min).

Many terabytes of data have been collected, including loads, motions, power, biofouling and environmental data. This information will drive the next phase of the project, which is to analyse the data and use the findings to investigate powering offshore aquaculture facilities.

Stay tuned!

Real-time data is now being transmitted from the M4 including M4 location and orientation, live and historical wave characteristics including significant wave height, wave direction, and period, mooring loads and hinge rotation along with live CCTV footage and power generated from the last event.

Additionally, the M4 Wave Energy Converter has returned to its test site in King George Sound, getting towed out under its new Noongar name ‘Kwilyilah’.
We worked with the Albany Heritage Reference Group, and participating local Menang-Noongar Elders chose the name ‘𝗞𝘄𝗶𝗹𝘆𝗶𝗹𝗮𝗵’ – dolphin that describes the leaping/hinging motion above water and the strong connection and knowledge shared between dolphins and coastal communities. Thank you to the Menang community for being involved in our project.

The survival mode for M4 was successfully tested, reaching a maximum hinge angle of almost 40 degrees in waves up to 2 meters! In this sea-state the maximum mooring load was over 2000kg. Footage captured from onboard cameras!

The M4 Wave Energy Converter has successfully been deployed into King George Sound and has begun transmitting data on the power generation from ocean waves.

Over the next six months, the M4 is expected to generate renewable energy from wave motion while gathering crucial performance data, providing insights into the technology’s effectiveness as a clean energy source for Australia’s Great Southern region.

“It is a world-first, a fully open-sourced wave energy generator for which all data gathered during the operation will be displayed on the specific website and be made available to the public domain,” MERA and UWA Oceans Institute Director, Christophe Gaudin.